With increasing popularity of wide area networks such as the Internet and/or World Wide Web, network growth and traffic have experienced tremendous growth. Network users continue to desire faster networks, which may be difficult to achieve using existing wired technologies.
An alternative to wired network solutions is a wireless or free space optical (FSO) communication technology. Such FSO systems can use beams of light, such as laser beams, as optical communication signals, and therefore do not require cables or fibers connected between transmitters and receivers.
FSO communication systems are typically are typically set up as point-to-point systems. For example, a first station may include an optical transmitter that directs an optical signal (e.g., a laser beam) to a second station having an optical receiver. The optical transmitter can modulate the optical signal to carry data. The optical receiver would then, ideally, collect all of the energy of the optical signal and convert the optical signal into an electrical signal. The optical receiver can operate on this electrical signal recover the modulated data and, in some applications, align the receiver to optimally receive the optical signal. In some applications, optical transceivers are used so that the two stations can send optical signals to each other. Although such FSO communication systems have significant advantages over wired systems, they do not support taps or adders as are used in some wired systems.